Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to start attracting web traffic is publish web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also understand how much work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and configured, you can automatically start getting new traffic as you begin publishing web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth looking into any advantage available to improve your results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with an anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is humming along in the gizmo-making plant when things suddenly stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and walks immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the board for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny hammer from his utility belt and makes a single tap about two cm from the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request of payment for services for $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the factory manager dials the expert. Why had he charged them such a ridiculously high fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges can seem quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get certain results
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things function as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your site, and various external sites and online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
Third-Party Sites
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and site will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google Webmasters, you can use this information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and site details has been entered, you can add your account code to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to many other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing, your details can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with all regulations.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
Tags & categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post web content on a consistent basis to attract web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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